Believe in the Flowers.

Carol of the Zombie Jesus!

All right, so!

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This is probably going to be a short post, which I apologize for. However, things around here have been interesting ...


First, Internet, we can officially say it out loud: Kid #2 will be here in July 2009. The families know, so it's okay to tell everybody else. So there you go, Internet - we're having another baby. Merry Christmas and happy new year.

Secondly, the dear husband has been in an awful mood for two days now and while I typically consider myself a rather tolerant individual, I am very close to tearing my hair out. He is existing in a little pit of self-defeat and frustration, one that he refuses to try to get out of, so for now I'm doing my best to pretend that this is obviously an "okay" way to act and be. Meanwhile my helpful suggestions for ending this moodswing have gotten me nowhere, although I think at one point he may have grunted at me in reponse to something I said. I suppose I should consider that "progress" and put on a smile.

Wow!

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Okay, so a few things to get to now, I suppose - if one can ignore the fact that it is past 3 AM and I have absolutely no intention of going back to bed anytime soon. Even though it's freezing over here, brr.


First, I WON THINGS. This NEVER happens to me, and I have been a firm believer for many years that I am not only incredibly unlucky but probably also cursed in more ways than one. Yet, somehow, I have managed to win two beautiful handcrafted items. The first is an amazing holiday goblet (see it in this post) from Lorrie over at Our Name Is Blog (which, by the way, you should be reading if you are not already). The giveaway was random and the suggested blog topic that I gave was to blog about the worst gift you have ever given someone, or have been given by someone else. Trust me, you need to go look at the entrants; they were all amazing and hilarious. I unfortunately didn't get to participate, but it seems I've won enough and will still try to put something up on that topic, hopefully tomorrow. If you read my blog and not Lorrie's, please, throw up some kind of post or something on this topic anyway if you get the chance.

The second thing I won was a gorgeous picture from Life Spatula, which is yet again another blog you ought to be reading if you aren't already. There's a picture of the painting here and I can't begin to tell you how totally stoked I am about these things. It feels like we have nothing nice in our apartment and both of these things will be welcome additions to an otherwise bland place with skin-tinted walls and posters from PlayStation and computer game hint books. Spatula has given a challenge that I try to draw the scene I portrayed; at the very least I intend on trying to find the picture in question. I know it's at Mom's house somewhere.

You should be able to find both Our Name Is Blog and Life Spatula in my sidebar.

The second thing I would like to note is that WE HAVE A MOUSE. I realize this is an older house and it's winter, but seriously? A mouse? When Colin finally came to bed at, oh, 2:00 AM (he has to be up at 7 AM so this is bad enough) we talked for a little while because he was grumpy about Gmail being rather stupid, and then, right before I'm about to get back to sleep and I'm warm and comfortable and snuggled up with the kid and thinking life's pretty good, he says, quietly, "Oh, by the way, I don't want to scare you or worry you, but ..." I would like to note that this is a HORRIBLE way to start a conversation. Here I am thinking that while I was asleep one of the carbon monoxide detectors went off and I totally missed it and he turned it off instead of waking us up, or he had gone out in the ice storm and something had happened to the car, or maybe my computer had randomly exploded (I've been having a lot of problems with lock-ups recently). Any number of bad things could have occurred and my mind is cycling through the possibilities at 2 AM, going probably 200 mph. Then, "Um, I think I saw a mouse run into Gabe's room." Now, I'd like to note that at that point I had a !!!!!!!! moment for several reasons, because that's just disgusting. Mice don't scare me, but the knowledge that one was IN MY SON'S ROOM is about enough to make me want to ritualistically slaughter something. "I mean, it could have been my hair or something, and it's late, and you know I see things when it's late, but.." 

So I got up and went into Gabe's room - damn kid still doesn't sleep by himself - and pulled his mattress out of his racecar bed, since that's where Colin said he thought the thing ran. I pull out the folded, clean cardboard boxes that stack the mattress up (you'd understand if you've seen one of these things, there's this weird hole in the bed itself - probably to make it lighter - that is smaller than a crib mattress), and just as I'm getting to the bottom I see this gray thing scurry back behind the bed. There was a lot of cussing going on because there I am, standing barefoot in his room with stuff EVERYWHERE. Colin comes in and hesitates, then says he thinks he saw the thing run into one of our only two closets, both of which happen to be in the kid's room. Oh, did I mention that he told me, also while we're laying in bed, that he had seen mouse droppings in a box of unused dishes under one of our lower cabinets? 

So tomorrow while Colin's at work, you will never guess who is going to go on an insane cleaning spree before calling our landlord - who is, ironically enough, the mother of a guy I went to high school with whom I absolutely adored, but not like THAT - and telling her that she ought to send someone quick or I will probably end up going insane, and that would mean she doesn't get rent.

Moral of the story: Do NOT tell your wife at 2 AM as you come to bed that you thought you saw a mouse. Seriously, let me lay in comfort a couple more hours and then go insane about it in the daylight when I can actually do things without waking up the kid.

(Okay, in all honesty I'm glad he told me or I probably would have freaked out when I got up and he informed me, instead of telling me as soon as he knew.)

A Bad Gift

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Today I found a cup.


By "found a cup" I don't mean that I went to a cute little antique store or that I visited a local boutique and searched high and low to find the world's most adorable collectible teacup. There was no "ooh" and "aah" over a perfect price, no negotiation because of that little chip on the rim, no rushing home to Google its origins and maker to see if it is worth anything more than what I payed for it, or if I was ripped off.

I mean that I moved furniture and I found a sippy cup.

This sippy cup was half-full of an unidentifiable liquid that had been sitting under one of our old plush rocking chairs for God only knows how long. I had no idea if it was separated milk that had gotten to the point where all the curd stuff had simply dissolved, or if it was juice from yesterday. I really would have preferred the latter because then it would have smelled like apple.

So I took said cup outside while wearing my dish gloves and thought I'd open it there, for safety's sake. I tend to be affected heavily by smells and I knew if it stank I would regret opening it indoors; the best thing I could have done if I opened that cup inside was to dump it into the toilet and spray some air freshener after I flushed the contents, which would have ended up smelling like cinnamon apple HELL. Besides, you know how frigid winter air works: you can't smell a damn thing because by the time you're inhaling, your snot has frozen the little hairs in your nostrils into hair Icepicks of Doom (yes, it has been that cold here recently). But I swear that when I opened that stupid cup I could smell EVERYTHING about it. It was either milk or chocolate Pediasure; either way it had probably been sitting around for several days too long and had formed some kind of odd congealed stuff on top that I couldn't identify or see before opening the cup. All of my ideas of not being able to smell anything outside were destroyed as soon as I dared to take a breath because trust me, I could smell that stuff, and it smelled like it was going to reach out of that cup and kill me with its bare hands. I dumped what was left onto the gravel and flung the cup around a few times away from myself and the house in hopes of getting as much of the congealed stuff out as I could, then came back inside. Guess what, the smell FOLLOWED ME. I ran over to the sink and dumped in half of a container of our lime-scented "this would destroy the scent of two-day-old dog shit in the middle of summer with one drop" dish soap into the cup and added hot water, then shook it around, and you'd never guess that I could STILL SMELL IT. So now that evil, Godforsaken cup is sitting in the sink, shut, full of hot water and soap, because you had better bet that I will NOT be the one to wash it out. I think I've done my share of dishes for one day.

A Bit Much

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As time passes, I'm finding that these ups and downs are a bit much for me. They're difficult to handle and deal with, and I think that the worst part is (easily) that there are far more downs than ups anymore. I have always been familiar with the concept of depression and how very powerful it can be, but right now it has surpassed the point of "tolerable" and has gone into the realm of "insane." I've dealt with this before in a similar situation, so I understand what's going on with me - as much as I possibly can, at least - but it seems like this is a spur-of-the-moment insanity that has grabbed me and thrown me around in circles until I'm too dizzy to function. Never mind that thanks to a dysfunctional air mattress, NONE of us are sleeping well, and I'm sure you can see that life in this apartment has, as of late, not been that much fun. Typically, cleaning up the house means both of us looking at each other, sighing, and jabbing one another through a cleanup routine that leaves us with a nicer house but feeling just as depressed as we began.


Meanwhile, I've been doing some soul searching in hopes of finding out what I intend to spend the rest of my life doing. My original intention was to become a choir director, but my experiences in the last couple of years have been less than positive, and while at J-Dub I changed my mind. After the kid was born, I thought I would perhaps move to an associate of science and go into psychology; problem with that being that I would have to spend far too many years in school and it would require more financing than we could manage, either now or in ten years. And I'm not really sure I could handle knowing exactly what is psychologically wrong with myself and the rest of my family. I can easily imagine the kind of hell that would result in, and while I am all for torturing loved ones to the best of your ability, I don't think I'm okay with something that may result in death - either me killing them, or them dispatching of my irritating, psychoanalyzing self.

So I've turned my head toward the only other thing that has thus far appealed to me: midwifery (wivery?). I've done some research into this; the downside would be that the nearest school in Illinois that would offer such courses is in Chicago. There's no way we'll be able to move to Chicago anytime soon, and a ten hour total commute every day is even more impossible, so for now this is something that I'm hopeful I can pull off, but I have no real expectations. I'd rather take it one day at a time, finding out information and doing what little I can to get myself to that point. Still, it feels good to know what I want to do with my life, and better to know that I've finally found something that seems to suit me. I already have a strong grasp on a lot of medical concepts and my prior knowlege of psychology should prove at least somewhat useful in learning what I need to; that way, not everything will be new information and most of it would hopefully be a refresher. Anyone who has any sort of experience with this sort of thing or who has useful advice is more than welcomed to comment.

I suppose, now, that I ought to get going. I have an hour and a half before the hubby is off work, and I had cleaning that I intended to do before then. I'm thinking I may turn DDR back on so that the kid will have something to distract him while I put away clothes and generally pick up this mess that has recently been our home. Wish me luck.

How Things Go

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Things around here lately have been .. Interesting.


As most of you are aware, we ended up losing our car around the end of October. The 23rd, actually, I think - it ended up being towed to Lee's Summit, Missouri, which is just outside of Kansas City. Thanks to a lot of help from my mom (mostly financial) and a lot of waiting and playing phone tag, we finally got the car back. Somewhere in there, we also ended up having the power shut off for two days or so, thanks to a gross misunderstanding on the behalf of the woman I had spoken to when we switched the power over to our new apartment from the old one. That in and of itself is a long story that may be shared later, but at this point I can't bring myself to care enough about either thing to ramble off stories and recollections and reasons; all that matters is that it's done and everything is taken care of and fixed. We have power and we have the car.

The emotional turmoil that I'm experiencing right now is inasne. I won't go into the reasons behind what I feel and think, but this is a rough patch for us. Moreso, in an odd way, for me than for "us." The one thing I miss the most is having a social life, though at this point the semblance of one that I once had has dissolved into something I joke bitterly about to myself. The only connection I really have to any of my former friends is through Facebook; an unreliable, at best, vantage from which to watch the life I wish I could have lived continue without skipping a beat. There are times I've imagined to myself what life would be like if I had won $10 million, or if I had finished college, or if our son hadn't been born; cruel as that seems to some, it's something I believe all parents are welcome and entitled to think about, especially when the parents in question are young and haven't lived the same life as their peers. Not to insinuate that I'm a party girl or that I would spend every night out at bars - I've never had much of an interest in drinking or sitting in bars with a bunch of strangers - but there are certain aspects that I know would be very different if I wasn't a mother. I would like to think I wouldn't have lost touch with so much of my past life, that so many of my friends wouldn't have felt compelled to drift away. On one hand, I hardly blame them - a woman with a child tying her to the house who can't always find reliable childcare isn't really worth inviting when "going out" doesn't necessarily mean that a nearly-two-year-old is invited - but at the same time I still wish that there was a certain consideration given that was at least attempted just after he was born. A message or wall post on Facebook is at best impersonal, while I've found that one of my friends I have no number for - and for some reason I've had a lot of resistance in getting it - and the other is constantly busy. 

Which is good, in a way. It's nice to see the people I care about continue with their lives despite the hills and bumps; 80% of the time I'm kept in the know about their accomplishments, although their rough times are dealt with by other, likely more capable, closer friends. It's good to see that they're pushing for their dreams still, ensuring they accomplish the things that they have always said were important to them. Here and there I'm given an invitation to an event I likely can't attend, although most of the time I find my name included in the list of mass invites, the people who likely know the invitee or the person the party is being held for, to a degree - though few seem to be actual close friends.

It's nice to know that my old friends are continuing their lives, but there are some things that still make me sick to my stomach.

The only plus side I've had thus far is that one of my favorite blog authors, Heather Armstrong of Dooce fame, is expecting her second child in June of 2009. It was announced today at dooce.com and I could not be happier for her, knowing that she had already suffered one miscarriage and knowing too that she and her husband Jon have been going through a lot. I know Leta will make a great big sister.

Recently, the talented and insightful Heather Armstrong (AKA Dooce) wrote on her blog that she firmly believes any woman (or, really, any voter) who intends to vote for John McCain in November should reconsider their options (read the post in question here). She was relatively polite about the whole thing, if you take into account that it's her own damn blog, and she should have the right to talk about whatever she pleases as often as she pleases without suffering from the flack that is often thrown at bloggers who have gotten the opportunity to head to the mainstream with their own website and advertisement (of course, as we all now know, it is practically impossible for that poor woman to enjoy a moment of freedom on her own blog).

Anyway, I digress. The point is that Heather has the right to say or do whatever she wants on her blog. Many long-time readers have apparently gone out of their way to not only threaten to stop reading her blog, but to call her names and even threaten her personal well being. To call this "disturbing" is simply not descriptive enough, and too many of her readers have replied perfectly: individuals expecting only posts that are funny and never anything else are already grossly misled. Her sole purpose in life is not to entertain a specific group of people, but to have a place to share her views and experiences in parenthood - information that many of us have found not only useful but crucial - whatever they may be. It's a pity that she's being tortured like this, excommunicated from some of her fans because they refuse to read about politics on a personal blog. Well, tough; as Heather has said, politics matter to her right now, so she's going to blog about them. She's going to yell her opinions just as loudly as anyone else who isn't afraid to do so. She has proven that she welcomes other viewpoints and disagreement, but how is it fair to threaten her? So stop reading her blog. A few - maybe even a hundred - angry people who can't stand to see a woman empowered enough to make her views publically known aren't really going to change her livelihood. So why they've decided to threaten her openly is a point of contention to me - no doubt they're just trying to be malicious. Nobody's forcing them to read her blog or the political posts. I have absolutely no doubts in my mind that Heather is going to continue to make political statements because it's an important topic to her at the moment. This is true of a lot people, and I don't doubt that many blogs have been inundated with the attempts of many authors to explain their political standpoints.

TL;DR version:
People are treating Heather like crap for no reason. It's disturbing to think that people like them are allowed to intermingle with the more sane among us without some kind of locator device to ensure that the rest of us are safe while the lunatics are out threatening everybody else. I highly admire and respect the people who can state their opinion and disagree without being rude, crass, or threatening.

Without A Goodbye

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I went to pick Colin up from work in Mom's car; once we were back at Mom's, she drove us back here to our house. On the way to Mom's from Best Buy, Bobb called almost immediately and he and Colin made plans for Colin to go to Aaron's game. When we got here, to our place, Steve pulled in - maybe ten seconds later - and after Colin helped me get everything inside, he left again with a very half-assed hug. I have no idea when he'll be home and have no intention of making contact with him unless he starts it; I say that for a couple of reasons. First, because he confuses the hell out of me and I assume that he needs his time out to not think about everything that's going on, and secondly because I'm honestly really jealous that he gets to go do things and go out to have time away from Gabe with his friends and I don't. I want that same freedom, that same ability, but if I go anywhere or do anything I have to take Gabe with me. One might argue that it works out because I go to work during the day and Colin keeps the kid, but on the other hand, I keep him at night. I'm not sure where I would take an argument like this from there, except to go on about how I just want to figure out what to do, want things to be all right again as much as he does, want a chance to be an individual as much as he does but when do I get that opportunity? Exactly .. I don't.


Also, I am very tired of a screaming baby and a constantly deflating mattress.

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